Friday, 30 October 2009

Fidelity, after long practice, toThe things that have crossed one's path in life,Moves one to find "history" in a morning, A moonlit night, a transitory patchOf sun upon grass, the turning of a cat's Sleek head over its shoulder to look backInto one's eyes, a lifelong lover's touch,The memory of the shy sweet sidelongSmile of a friend one may not see againIn "this life"--these things define home To one now that one lives largely in one's mind--As though there had ever been any otherPlace--once born, once having existed--In which to somehow locate a world

Because brief hours before fadeout life becomes

A late awakening, much as one assumesIs the experience of "lost" generationsWhose youth is turned back toward childhood byDreams; just so one's own dim youth now at last Appears a kind of slumber from which the slowProcess of waking took a half centuryOr so, as time now opens up its eyes,Yawns, stretches, struggles in dark to discoverWhere it is among whirling things, places, years. But of course one will never fully emergeFrom this fog, nor in one's heart wish to do so,For mere excursions don't suffice on visitsTo dead cities--excavation too's required,Cries out the hungry unborn poem Within us, demanding to exist asIf alive

Long trekThrough the lost nightIn Randy's vanTo the Novato High gymnasium

Psyched for the big matchupWith the Wise StreetboysOf Marin CityI'm bringing the ball upcourtLike an educated yo-yoFeeling this rush of power I shift into overdriveAnd dribble the ballOff my cheapsneakered footIt spins away wildly to starboardWhere a skinny guy with cornrowsPlucks it out of the air With sublime nonchalance And in one motionFires it full courtTo the sprinting quick releaserWho glides in for an easy two pointsAnd we succumb 85-47Well somebody had to loseAnd we palefaces always knewIt was going to be usLater the showers are coldAnd you have to walk a long wayOver cold asphaltTo get to themAnd then the long ride homeUnder speechless starlightThrough the black January nightOn the floor of the defeated bus

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

Out late and looking again to the hazed red urban evening sky for a sign What is that bright star next to the moon tonight?Asking myself this among other questions of fleeting consequenceI watched Jupiter the great fluid king of the night With his rude belching gases and submissive fluctuating moons

His swashbuckling bright streaks flaunted like sans culottes Boiling firestorm spots and magnetic aurorasCozying up, it seemed, to the chaste and shyingWaxing gibbous Lady Luna -- seeming so close,Though in reality far more distant and intense,

With nothing of her ethereal luminousSilent running beauty, her unearthly milky violet glow --Challenging her brightness perhapsThough hardly her pulchritude -- Until my view grew occluded under the constellated neons Of the Pyramid Ale House

Waxing gibbous moon, with Saturn, Venus and Jupiter: composite photo by Michael Myers, April 28, 2004Jupiter eclipses (shadows of three of Jupiter's moons in alignment across the planet's face, two of the moons visible): image by NASA/ESA/Erich Karkoschka (U. of Arizona), 2004Aurora borealis on Jupiter (bright streaks and dots caused by magnetic flux tubes connecting Jupiter to its largest moons, Io, Ganymede and Europa): Hubble Space Telescope UV image by John T. Clarke (U. Michigan)/ESA/NASA, 2000

Intense imaginal "relationships" longings moodswings violent turbulences creativeelations out of nowhere lifting the undisclosed soul into the clouds in the suburban back yard

"temoignages" moments of witness to a conditionof sudden grace marked in diaries by a star as "special signs" the gold threads in the weave the inexpressibility of life's fleeting moments its transitoryepiphanies a brief shading of light on the sideof a building

the abrupt rising of a flock of birds into the aira piece of classical music heard on the radioa face on the bus a brother's smile the odd buoyantbeing-alive quality everywhere a rare harmony and calm as if a dark sky opened suddenlyto reveal with wondrous clarity the constellations he so loved

Dec. 9, 1948 (Wednesday)

the "all over" feeling that makes of the incidental a never ceasing wonder and spectacle of the spiritual

A flash of the spinning hand of Moira at the headOf the bed upon which bolts crackle and strike, A flash of the hand of nature in the genetic chain,Divine anger signifying energy, lawDestiny of all men being the same, death

One doesn't argue with this any more, Amid the blasted neurons, than a bell with its flaw: The crack of determination under the hoodOf the chromosome. Her messages get lost in the softBlue dust left by the memory of light.

Thursday, 22 October 2009

When the Medina Luminous Division marched intoDivine Anger in the Energy Refuge Theatre --Bottle green starlight chaos, Blood rivers in the sand, dust flecked with bits of Sumerian gods --The Commanders felt good about themselves,They said Say hello to AllahAnd the Medina Luminous Division said hello to God.

Next the In God We Trust Division was drawn out of K CityIt was Bravo-20 on the Basra RoadRockeye and Hellfire lived up to the instruction manualsAs the fireballs digested the convoys of the helplessThe Commanders paused to gas upTheir F/A-18s, their humvees, their Apaches Then moved out to incinerate the Hammurabi.

The days go byThe world spins roundThe subject is always movingThe mind can't keep upIt's all a blur The eye and the "I"A glass for seeingAlways cloudyEvery two hours I wipe off my glasses

Colorful blur created by moving subject, moving camera and 1/13 second exposure: photo by Robert Lawton, 2006Golden Gate Bridge refracted in rain drops acting as lenses: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2007Magnifying and light collecting effect of a drop of oil on a glass plate held a short distance above a text: photo by Roger McLassus, 2005

I've found allsaints lost at midnight in the rain Seek shop doorways fit to lay their bodies down And dwell upon the sins that have expelled them: Those sins, O Friend, which they perceive as wounds

Inflicted they know neither why nor by whom,Nor in defiance of what remorseless laws.The wind that rakes the street is unforgiving, Warmth but a memory, winter coming on,

The concrete cold, the cardboard pallet sodden,God far away, but unfortunately not Man,Who motors past to get to bars or home,Completely unaware they're bedding there,Splashing sheets of grey water out of puddlesThat wash over them in chill waves they mayIf they so choose trust to wash their sins away,Dimly aware at last they're given something.

6.373 The world is independent of my will.6.374 Even if all that we wish for were to happen, still this would only be a favour granted by fate; so to speak; for there is no logical connexion between my will and the world, which would guarantee it, and the supposed physical connexion itself is surely not something that we could will._____

6.4 All propositions are of equal value.

6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists -- and if it did exist, it would have no value.If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.It must lie outside the world.

6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.Ethics is transcendental.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.) -- Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921

Here is a blackbird. How many ways are there to look at a blackbird?What are the word associations of "blackbird"?Are neural entanglements possible, with so common and simple a word?Could such a word be imagined to have unintended, even unsuspected connotative aspects? Is there a difference between a good poem and an exquisite mechanical toy? Are those nominations, "poem" and "mechanical toy", merely indications of two aspects of the same thing?

A language is a picture of a world.

In a language game all the plays made by each player of the game are in some sense tricks. One may imagine language as an element in the infinite game of life, the game whose sole object is to keep playing. Competition, in this regard, would represent a false image. In a game of catch, the object is to keep the game going, not to win. Is there a winner in a game of solitaire?

The object of the language game is to keep the world going.

6.431 So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.

6.4311 Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

The grave of Wittgenstein, at the parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, is interesting in that it is, at Wittgenstein's wish, not imposing at all, yet receives constant stealthy attention from mystery visitors who scatter pennies and other small objects (a lemon, a porkpie, a a cupcake) upon it, at various times, in curious patterns. Sometimes these votive objects bear an oblique symbolic relation to Wittgenstein's work. In the photo below, Tractatus 6.54 is recalled by the miniature ladder someone has left. These collections of seemingly random objects have replaced one another repeatedly over the years, giving the grave of Wittgenstein, like certain other reminders of the steady presence of the infinite within the finite and the eternal within the temporal in this obscure duck-rabbit picture we call the world, a continuous quality of aspect change.

6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.

(Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)

6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly correct one.

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.